


curtains close (on a kiss god knows)

by sleepinnude



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Getting Together, Handwaving, M/M, Minor Eileen Leahy/Sam Winchester, blatant disregard of show's lore, gratuitous use of british rock, gratuitous use of playlist
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-25
Updated: 2020-01-25
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:47:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22398061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sleepinnude/pseuds/sleepinnude
Summary: It’s beginnings that are really hard, but then again Chuck has been proven wrong more than a few times.At the end of it all, with no more monsters and just the sprawl of the rest of their lives, the hunters celebrate and Dean finds a way toward a beginning with Castiel.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester, Eileen Leahy/Sam Winchester
Comments: 2
Kudos: 76





	curtains close (on a kiss god knows)

**Author's Note:**

> listen, the amount of handwaving the happens here is truly egregious but i just wanted to write about two soft boys dancing together & kissing a li'l bit. if the show is allowed to tell us to not pull on a thread & think too much on the logic then so can i.
> 
> i think it was the most recent jibcon where someone asked the boys what zepp song the show would close on and jensen thought for like 3 minutes straight before saying something to the effect of "it has to be ramble on, doesn't it?" so credit to him for that.

Chuck was wrong.

Yeah, be more specific. Narrow it down a little -- there's a lot Chuck was wrong about. Most everything really. Tracking back a decade, almost, for this one, because when Chuck said, with all the certainty of a freshman philosophy major, that _endings are hard_ , he was wrong.

(He was less wrong about the ten-words after, about nothing ever really ending. Less wrong, but still mostly wrong.)

Everything does end, all of a sudden, quite easily. Just a vacuum-lack, no more omens or monsters, poisoned waterhole all dried up. Everything ends, like it was promised, and their friends gone passed are back.

The boys don’t believe it, at first, don't trust it. Because they came to endings that weren’t endings before. Sam and Dean sat, staring at that horizon only to find that while, yes, the sun would rise again, it would also set again. Another big bad was, generally, always just around the corner. But they turn corner after ever corner and no next comes. It's just… Normal. It's cavities and break-downs and colds. Sam overcooks the pasta to mush twice and the second time Dean laughs so hard he has to brace himself against the counter. And then he loses his balance and ends up on the floor. Cas and Jack wander in with matched looks of concern over their faces. Dean sputters through laughter, saying "Dinner is going to be late," and then collapses back into gasping giggles. 

It’s a new normal but that’s what it is: normal.

Dean takes to it easily, a duck to water. Barely a month goes by and he’s happily settled; has a garden, fixes up every car in a twenty-mile radius. Sam takes a little longer to come around, his shoulders stay high and tight for months out, even with Eileen’s smile every morning and the comfortable still of sunrise after sunrise.

Six months out from God’s death and Sam finally let’s his spine sink. Finally allows it to just be a good thing, a happy ending. That’s when they’re finally allowed to throw the party.

All their friends ( _alive_ ) trail through the bunker, a cheer raising up at each new arrival: Bobby, Jody with Alex and Patience, Claire and Kaia, Donna, Ellen and Jo, Charlie, their Mom. It’s a who’s who of their years on the job and more than once Dean hears friends from different eras trading stories. Charlie and Jo are braiding each other’s hair, Ellen and Donna bark out laughter, Bobby and Mary pass a whiskey bottle back and forth. Someone turns on the music after a few hours and in the way that these things happen, it becomes a dance party. Because they killed God and Death is on their side and the balance was back and they are normal. So they dance with all their friends, in what was once a war room and now is just a really impressive foyer. 

Charlie points to Garth and selects Werewolves of London with a deadpan. They all groan, but then Dean does his best, buzzing _little old lady got mutilated late last night_ as he shimmies toward a red and grinning Bess. Jo bounces over to the iPod next and then she and Jack are yowling along to Back on the Road Again. Dean makes some joke at her about Kevin Cronin and Gary Richrath and Jo punches him in the shoulder hard enough to make his bones vibrate.

It goes like that for awhile, songs and sing-along echoing off their high walls. It’s elation so pure that it could probably rival angelic grace. 

It starts as a farce --all pomp and camp-- him dancing with Cas. They're drunk and happy and everyone is flailing about so Dean swings the former angel a little too hard and dips him and they’re all laughing. The song playing is some pop rock, glammy bullshit that Sammy must have picked up back in his Palo Alto days. Dean doesn’t know the name and he’ll never admit it but he likes it, actually. There’s a drum kick and a guitar strumming and Dean has enough whiskey in him that he can spin deftly on his toes, barely a half-foot from Cas’s space. He twirls him around with one hand and their friends are clapping in time and dancing. Rocking Cas’s shoulders, Dean watches Sam and Eileen move together easily, just as alcohol loose. Claire has long-since shed her cooler-than-you-I’m-so-embarrassed pretense and has one hand in Jody’s, the other in Kaia’s. They’re all twining around and tripping over one another and Charlie is loudly declaring something about wanting to have a kiki next, or maybe she’s requesting the next song.

Sam sings and signs along to Eileen, tells her he’s gonna _take her mama out all night, gonna show her what it’s all about_. They get close, rub noses. Mary, their mama, is up on the landing, sitting with her legs strung through, still passing that bottle back and forth with Bobby.

It starts as a farce but then someone (Ellen) changes the song and suddenly there's Clapton’s careful, effortless guitar and there's Steve Winwood’s high-whine brilliance and Dean is looking at Castiel and _you are the reason I’ve been waiting so long_ shoots straight through him.

They’re not dancing anymore, not really, but Cas is looking back at him and his hands are on Cas’s waist and Cas still has a grip on the collar of his flannel. Winwood is _near the end and he ain’t got much time and he’s wasted and he can’t find his way home_ and it would be some blues rock song by a group called _Blind fucking Faith_ that makes it all finally shift under Dean's hands. 

Remember how Chuck was wrong? Endings aren’t hard. They’re the easiest goddamn thing in the world. 

Suddenly, it’s also the easiest goddamn thing for Dean to pitch himself just the slightest bit forward. His forehead is against Cas’s then and those expansive fucking blue eyes are locked on his, waiting. _Somebody must change._ 'I fucking hear you, Steve,' Dean thinks and then he’s leaning the rest of the way forward to kiss Cas. 

Something in his body hums _finally_. Something in his body hums _right_. Something in his body, deep and liquid hot, hums _fuck_. Because Cas is kissing him back and their friends are still dancing around them, Steve’s still singing, Eric’s still playing. None of that matters, though, outside of Cas kissing him back. 

He moves one of his hands to cup at Cas’s jaw, fingers catching on his ear and thumb pressing too hard into his cheek. His other hand hitches tighter on Cas’s waist, bunching at the dumb sweater that Cas is wearing because he hasn’t been in Jimmy Novak’s suit and trench coat since the end of it all. 

Cas, for his part, just pulls at Dean’s collar, yokes him in and keeps him still so that they can kiss and kiss and kiss. 

Faintly, Dean registers a sharp little inhale, Sammy saying his name, Jo and Charlie whooping. He doesn’t care, he doesn’t care, he doesn’t care. He’s kissing Cas and it is sweet and smoky and warm in the hearth of their friends and Chuck was wrong. 

Beginnings are hard. Whether you’re a chapped-ass monkey with a keyboard, or a man who’s just lost his wife to an inferno of a demon, or two brothers finding their way back to an open road or… or a hunter who’s not a hunter anymore with an angel who’s not an angel anymore. Beginnings are hard because they take courage and they take enough executive function to actually set the thing into motion. Put the pen to paper or start making up your own moves. 

When Dean pulls away it’s after the third (fifth?) kiss and the rattle of the cymbal is just finishing the song off. There’s a lull of quiet, silence, before John Bonham is tapping on an empty guitar case and Jimmy Page starts playing that opening guitar that Dean would know anywhere, would know in his sleep. And it’s a song that Cas knows now, too, because it was thirteen on Dean’s Top 13 Zepp Traxx, closing out the mixtape strong. Cas mumbles _sometimes I grow so tired_ against Dean’s lips and Dean’s a simple man so it goes straight to his cock. 

He doesn’t have much time to explore that, though, because the guitar and drums are all building until the rhythm kicks it all up to eleven and he can hear Sammy screaming the chorus next to him, performing a truly heinous air guitar. He casts about to see if Claire is properly mocking his baby brother but she and Kaia are headbanging in a way that makes Dean strangely proud. So Dean just grins across to Castiel and sings _I’ve been this way ten years to the day_ and shows his brother how a real air guitar is done. 

Much, much later and the music has stopped. The bottles are all empty and glasses are still strewn over surfaces and most of their friends have sacked out in guest rooms or on couches. Much, much later and a glow from a table lamp that reminds Dean of angelic Grace except _warm_ is the only light on in the whole of the bunker. 

He’s got Cas underneath him, stupid sweater long gone, hands spread wide over his chest. Dean is looking, unabashed, watching the twitch and dance of Cas’s every muscle, getting to know the pink tinge over his cheeks and nose, the flush on his chest and neck and he’s warm, he’s hot, he’s scalding. More than a decade ago he pulled Dean from Hell and he gasps against Dean’s neck, "I've loved you since then," and Dean’s hips stutter and catch on Cas’s thigh in one long hot drag. 

Cas’s one hand is curled over Dean’s ass, keeping him close, reeling him closer. His other is cupped against Dean’s shoulder, a palm print’s seared memory. And Dean can be brave, he was brave enough to write this, his own beginning, so he’s brave enough to pull from a kiss and blurt out, “Alastair.” The the name blows Cas’s eyes wide and Dean scrabbles to clarify, “That’s when I knew. When you asked me to… When you didn’t want me to.” When Dean could feel in his chest that he wanted nothing more than Castiel to just...make it all better, make it all go away, absolve him of his sins. And goddamn, it had been ten years and fuck anyone who said beginnings are easy. They have been walking parallel toward their beginning for years, through deaths and through endings. Endings are easy. 

“You’re so fucking stupid,” Cas tells him and Dean laughs but it gets swallowed up in another kiss, and a third and a fourth, and countless. 

Chuck was wrong about the endings being the hard thing. But he was only mostly wrong about nothing ever really ending. Some things did. Some things rambled on into an open sunrise and sprawled their roots wide and far. 

Some things didn’t so much end as they did lull quiet into the night, with too many heartbeats in an underground bunker and two men finally finding their way toward a beginning of their own making. 

**Author's Note:**

> steve winwood: this is a song about wishing your friend could kick his addiction  
> me: make dean & cas kiss to it
> 
> a huge debt of inspiration to [tall grass](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13127040/chapters/30030726) by [aeli_kindara](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aeli_kindara/pseuds/aeli_kindara). this fic is in no way related to that one, but it i couldn't seem to not write this after finishing that.
> 
> oh! and the title is from the song "Where Do We Go From Here" from _Once More, With Feeling_ of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
> 
> you can come to my [tumblr](https://disasterfreewill.tumblr.com/) if you want!


End file.
